Microsoft: no plans to release Milo and Kate

Kinect title Milo and Kate is only a technology demo says Aaron Greenberg

Xbox director of product management Aaron Greenberg has implied that Lionhead Studios' Milo & Kate is merely a tech demo and may not ever be released to the public.

Speaking on ABC's Good Game, Greenberg was asked why Milo & Kate was not featured at E3 2010.

"The Milo Project is something that Lionhead Studios in their labs had developed. Last year we unveiled the Project Natal technology, we showed a bunch of technology demos as part of that," said Greenberg.

"And obviously [Milo] is a technology demo that continues to exist, but right now it’s not a game that we’re planning to bring to market."

The game was one of the key demonstrations for Kinect (then known as Project Natal) at E3 2009 and involved an artificial intelligent child with which a user could interact.

The Kinect camera system enabled the child (Milo or Millie) to analyse the user's facial features in order to judge mood, while the motion sensing controls allowed direct interaction with mini-game activities.

Featuring many of the regular obsessions of Lionhead founder Peter Molyneux, from gesture-based interaction to a computer-simulated dog (the Kate character in the title), the game had its origins in the early 2000s as project Dmitri.

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That would tie into what Peter Molyneux said in a recent interview. He said that he was interested in developing Black and White for Kinect, but doesn't have time for that, or Milo and Kate (and another game which I forget at the moment).

It's a bit of a shame as I would have liked to experience it for myself (just to try and break it). i fear that everyone involved knows that that would be way to easy to do though.

David,
Aaron Greenberg was actually speaking to the Australian TV show Good Game on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) television, not the US ABC. Can you correct your article? The segment can be viewed here: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/goodgame/

I would agree with Jimmy, I really don`t think it ever worked as intended as that would have taken many years development time to get it where MS praised it would be. The hands on time magazines had with Milo last year where under controlled situations and they where only allowed to ask Milo what they where told to ask.

I am quite sceptical about this... I'm not sure about what Natal consists of (a webcam with a software?), but I can't help thinking that this is Enterprise-like technology, and it never passed through my mind that the ol' good Kirk's ship had 200$ worth pieces on it.
Jokes aside, most of us know about voice recognition softwares and related problems; my point is how and why did Lionhead develop in a few months a demo that makes Dragon look obsolete, and decided to keep it unreleased? Does it mean that those guys from Nevada playing with Blue Gene could've just waited a few more weeks and simulate a human boy that recognizes drafts instead of striving for a half-mouse??

Microsoft would have us believe that something that would be on the forefront of artificial intelligence design, not just in games AI but all computer science, could be bought for US$50-60 each. I suspect that the closest consumers will get to Milo in the next decade is stuff like Kinectimals.